Are you a charter business
 

I own a flying school and have just been through Part 61/141/142. Now the new regs are coming your way. Good luck folk. A few well intended suggestions to surviving the regulatory change, drawing on my experience.

Rule Number One
Absolutely insist that CASA produce a comprehensive Regulation Impact Statement as they are required to by law. For part 61/141/142, they got away with this.
"The existing flight crew training businesses will be required to meet new standards however, again whilst these represent a deviation from existing standards the changes are
relatively minor, which is supported by the feedback that CASA obtained from the consultation process." It was woefully inadequate and grossly inaccurate. Don't let it happen to your industry. Make sure CASA get the preliminary work right. When they release it, review it carefully.


Rule Number Two

Make sure you have a good relationship with your CASA paersonnel. If you don't, start repairing it, but you will be highly dependent on them so make sure they have your confidence and trust.

Rule Number Three

Ensure your CASA contacts have been well trained before being released into the field. With part 61/141/142 it was obvious sufficient training had not been provided. It created a very difficult situation for the CASA personnel at the front line. With all the best intent they were floundering. They had been let down.

Rule Number Four

Be wary of dates. You must work towards any CASA nominated deadlines, but budget for the what ifs. If a date gets delayed, what will be your contingency plan.


Rule Number Five

Consider pushing for a staged implementation i.e. operators less than 5(?) aircraft have an additional 12 months to comply, to try and level the playing field.

Rule Number Six

Get together. The smaller charter folk are underrepresented. Someone step up, and form a small organisation of half a dozen of you to work together on the implementation and reviewing the Regulation Impact Statement. Someone like Ben from Airspeed Aviation should put his hand up. I think he even lives in Barnaby Joyces electorate.

Rule number 7
 

All boats rise on the tide. If we can get CASA to recognise that "Systems" management as they envisage it (from Bull**** castle in CBR) is simply not practical for small family businesses, we might be OK.
Otherwise we're all stuffed.

Ben from Airspeed is also Ben from AOPA and is AOPA's Charter Industry convenor & Spokesman. You may have seen him taking on RAAA recently over their sleight-of-hand as they pretend they represent our end of the industry.

Make no mistake, RAAA and their members (Rex, Chartair, Corporate, FlyPelican, Altitude Aviation, Hardys, Skippers) all stand to gain from Part 135 because ANYONE WHO IS NOT A RPT OPERATOR NOW WILL NOT SURVIVE THE PART 135 TRANSITION. If you do somehow survive the 135 Transition, you will be killed off by the new maintenance rules (Class A Maintenance for all CHTR aircraft?) and/or the new fatigue rules.

You might be able to train your dog to be the Safety Manager under Part 135 but even your dog will want to go fly for Virgin/QF soon and then you will have to replace your dog with a pilot trained AND CASA Approved as a safety manager.
Then they leave and you have to replace them and train another.
The you get a new FOI who decides that as a Sfety manager you need an Auditors course and a SMS Awareness course so there's a week out of the office for each course (and a week out of the air) and a $5,000 to Southpac Aerospace - TWICE - and two weeks worth of wages and two weeks worth of meals and accommodation and in six months THEY leave you too.

Then the new FOI fresh from CASA C*** school decides (as happened to Par Avion/AoT recently) that because you need a safety manager under the terms of your RPT, AND under the terms of your Part 145 Maintenance, AND under the terms of your Part 142 school, you need to fill out THREE lots of Risk assessments and THREE Change management processes, one for each category of permission.

...because small business can afford that.

...and that's BEFORE Part 15 is introduced!..... and before we know what the maintenance rules will be!

I urge all GA CHTR operators to join AOPA. Yes I know it will rankle with a lot of you. They need more support and they really, truly are making a difference (Who got the Port Phillip Bay stupidity reversed?)

You have an Industry convenor in Ben Wyndham - according to AOPA's facebook page his email is [email protected]

He has organised meetings in Parliament House for other members, and attended to help. Yes, they will help you too.

What was the "Port Phillip Bay stupidity"?

Take a look at the PPruNe Thread here.

Probably not. Read this recently, seems to fit.
https://strikemag.org/bull****-jobs/

Self: Eddie: Speaking as a business owner with aeroplanes financed against my home.... I'll stand by my diagnosis. :sad:

Ahhh yes. Will give you that.